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Some scholars believe that Antoine Meillet had earlier said that a language is a dialect with an army, but there is no contemporary documentation of this. [10]Jean Laponce noted in 2004 that the phrase had been attributed in "la petite histoire" (essentially anecdote) to Hubert Lyautey (1854–1934) at a meeting of the Académie Française; Laponce referred to the adage as "la loi de Lyautey ...
A proverb (from Latin: proverbium) or an adage is a simple, traditional saying that expresses a perceived truth based on common sense or experience. Proverbs are often metaphorical and are an example of formulaic language .
Below is an alphabetical list of widely used and repeated proverbial phrases. If known, their origins are noted. A proverbial phrase or expression is a type of conventional saying similar to a proverb and transmitted by oral tradition.
Idiom or phraseme: a saying that has only a non-literal interpretation; "an expression whose meaning can't be derived simply by hearing it, such as 'kick the bucket.'" [3] Four-character idiom: Chengyu: Chinese four-character idioms; Sajaseong-eo: Korean form of four-character idioms; Yojijukugo: Japanese form of four-character idioms
An idiom is a common word or phrase with a figurative, non-literal meaning that is understood culturally and differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest; i.e. the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words (although some idioms do retain their literal meanings – see the example "kick the bucket" below).
An idiom (the quality of it being known as idiomaticness or idiomaticity) is a syntactical, grammatical, or phonological structure peculiar to a language that is actually realized, as opposed to possible but unrealized structures that could have developed to serve the same semantic functions but did not. [1]
Literature [ edit ] Aphoristic collections, sometimes known as wisdom literature , have a prominent place in the canons of several ancient societies, such as the Sutra literature of India , the Biblical Ecclesiastes , Islamic hadiths , the golden verses of Pythagoras , Hesiod 's Works and Days , the Delphic maxims , and Epictetus' Handbook .
The adage was a submission credited in print to Ronald M. Hanlon of Bronx, New York , in a compilation of various jokes related to Murphy's law published in Arthur Bloch's Murphy's Law Book Two: More Reasons Why Things Go Wrong! (1980). [1] A similar quotation appears in Robert A. Heinlein's novella Logic of Empire (1941). [2]